10 ms·

> With regards to transporting your laptop, you must first turn the laptop OFF This has been a problem for already quite long. I remember my very old laptop ov

> With regards to transporting your laptop, you must first turn the laptop OFF This has been a problem for already quite long. I remember my very old laptop overheating if being put in the backpack in Standby mode. Nowadays I in fact don't just turn laptops Off the default way. I go and disable the "fast start up" (Control Panel - Power Options - Choose what the power buttons do) to make sure the computer gets turnt of for real rather than using yet another flavour of hibernation. And it still starts very fast (a couple of seconds longer perhaps) so I see no reason for these "fast start up" and "modern stand-by" modes to even exist now as we have fast SSDs and everything. Besides starting up fast, another important value standby modes add is freeing you from having to open, position and initialize (open the documents/locations in them) all your apps manually every time. But this seems trivial to be reached by adding functions to just save the list of opened apps, their windows positions and the actual documents which were opened in them. This will require some coordinated effort from both the OS and the apps developers though.

vesinisa 5y ago
This is so infuriating, because this problem has already been solved once. It's called "Hibernation", and was added in Windows 95. This should write your MEM image to disk, power the laptop completely off and allow later restoring where you left when powering your laptop back on. But laptop manufacturers (including Apple) thought it somehow smart to remove true hibernation, and replace it with some botched "deep sleep" that is not actually working, as it does not actually turn the computer OFF. This is SO infuriating - who thought it smart to REGRESS on a solution that has worked so well for DECADES?
- captn3m0 5y ago
  There’s some really interesting security challenges that pop-up with Hibernation. Not sure if they blocked Apple though.
  - vesinisa 5y ago
    Anyone who is concerned about this should already be using full-disk encryption, which means the memory contents are actually better protected during hibernation than in a live state. This is one thing that usually Linux gets mostly right .. only if the proprietary GPU drivers played along. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Apple certainly could implement this properly but instead decide to release a new half-assed half-hibernation after another.
    - captn3m0 5y ago
      https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/55845.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/55845.html I was referring to this.
      - vesinisa 5y ago
        AFAIK this is only an issue if you think UEFI Secure Boot and TPM are a good idea. The traditional way to implement full-disk encryption on Linux is by disabling UEFI validation and deriving the key from a passphrase rather than storing it in the TPM.
        d110af5ccf 5y ago
        Personally I'd rather keep secure boot and just disable the kernel lockdown feature. You still gain a significant amount of security while maintaining functionality that way.
  - dathinab 5y ago
    Not really, this security challenge have been solved long ago, and require a degree of involvement which makes them irrelevant for most people.
- slezyr 5y ago
  It might be slower than cold boot on machines with 32GB of RAM
  - vesinisa 5y ago
    I have a 64 GB Mac with SSD and managed to trick it to use true hibernation (Apple does not want you to know it but you can still achieve true hibernation by enabling disk encryption (FileVault™) and forcing key material erasure from MEM on standby with `sudo pmset -a DestroyFVKeyOnStandBy 1`). I just timed it and bootup from hibernation to UI took 25 seconds, out of which maybe 5 seconds were taken by inputtting the encryption password. Certainly not a show-stopper, if this means not accidentally killing my €2k+ laptop because it decides to randomly wake up in my bag.
    - slezyr 5y ago
      Yes, but this is an issue with Apple products. My old PC with not-so-fast SSD can boot (Linux and Windows) much faster than 16" MacBook Pro.
      - vesinisa 5y ago
        Sorry.. I meant exactly that 25 seconds to boot up from hibernation is definitely not an issue. Why would it be? I store the laptop hibernated. I need to dehibernate exactly once a day. I work 8 hours a day, meaning less then a promille of my working day is spent waiting for my laptop to dehibernate. It's a non-issue.
- zokier 5y ago
  Hibernation in Windows hasn't gone anywhere. I have a Dell laptop in front of me and it has hibernate in the start menu as normal. Problem is that hibernation is slooow so people don't like to use it
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    I have a Dell laptop I bought within the last couple of months. Hibernate is not in the start menu, and the option to add it to the start menu has been disabled. It's still possible to assign "hibernate" as the action taken in response to various power-related actions such as closing the lid or pressing the power button. This makes no sense; I'm not sure what's going on.
    - RGamma 5y ago
      You can enable the start menu hibernate button in advanced power settings: System -> Power & sleep -> Additional power settings -> Choose what the power buttons do -> Change settings that are currently unavailable -> Check Hibernate. And then get lucky that your laptop wakes up again (mine dies 1 out of 10 times) Edit: sorry, can't read.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        No, you can't; that option is disabled. It cannot be checked. I don't know how I can state this more clearly. "Turn on fast startup (recommended)" is checked, and that option is also disabled and can't be unchecked, despite obviously being undesirable.
        lozenge 5y ago
        Maybe you have Group Policy settings? Sometimes "Windows tweaker" type apps install these. Also, mine has a link "Change settings that are currently unavailable" which shows a UAC prompt and then enables all checkboxes.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Hibernation took about three seconds on my Windows 98 SE laptop. It took three minutes on my Windows XP. It never finishes on modern Windows.
  - amiga-workbench 5y ago
    My Toshiba Libretto seems to have it built into the BIOS. The computer displays a full-screen animation of the Laptop dumping its system memory to disk, and after a few seconds it powers down. Its all very seamless and jank free.
  - pepoluan 5y ago
    I use Windows 10 Pro on Asus VivoBook 15. Hibernation takes approximately one minute.
  - jakub_g 5y ago
    Time to hibernate linearly depends on amount of RAM you have, and whether you have HDD or SSD. On my 16GB T450 (SSD) with Win10 it takes several seconds.
  - foepys 5y ago
    I use it every day on Windows 10. It takes about 30 seconds to go to full hibernate and 30 seconds to restore. My laptop has 32GB of RAM.
- IIsi50MHz 5y ago
  For people who had working hibernation, it may seem so. For support staff, and for hardware & OS vendors, dealing with customers complaining about hibernation or S3 sleep not working those states were so infuriating and definitely NOT a solved problem. Example failure modes: — Doesn't wake when told. — Immediately wakes instead of staying in low power state. — Performs a cold boot when trying to wake. — OS disables desired state with no explanation. — OS disables desired state which has worked perfectly on that machine for month/years, and OS claims it has been disabled because it is not compatible.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    Then they should've worked on fixing those problems, instead of adding even more new ones. (I admit I haven't used systems with broken hibernates, or at least not any where a little it of troubleshooting could get it working, so that may skew my perception of it.)
- acchow 5y ago
  Standby actually works 100% properly on my M1 and Intel MacBooks. Flush men to disk is not something I want or need. I quite like the instant availability and have come to expect it of products.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Hibernate works fine on my windows laptop, but it was not the default setting for lid closed. Mine has a performance switch built in. Close it while in high performance mode and the fan would continue to run at full blast. Stupid.
Raed667 5y ago
> laptop overheating if being put in the backpack I killed a macbook air exactly like this. It just decided not to shutdown like usual. Usually I'd put it on sleep mode, or just close the lid and it is fine, but it only took one time for it not to work properly to find the insides of my backpack like a sauna.
- creshal 5y ago
  > It just decided not to shutdown like usual. This happened once or twice with Windows laptops for me (Lenovo and Asus); but each time the laptop survived. Was yours a fanless model?
  - Raed667 5y ago
    It was probably the 2017 model, it had a fan. But it was in the tight pouch within the backpack that was supposed to protect laptops from bumps, so it didn't have much room to breath.
  - rawbot 5y ago
    Same thing happened to me with my Surface Book. I found it the next day with fans at max and burning hot. Still survived. Why aren't laptops shutting down when the CPU gets unbearably hot?
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Good question, they do turn off the discrete GPU when it gets too hot.
    - creshal 5y ago
      "Unbearably hot" for meatbags and "unbearably hot" for CPUs are different things; meatbags start having troubles at 50°C, while internal components are fine until 90-120°C. Traditional hard disks are the biggest exception, but I'm fairly certain that's not a worry for a Surface.
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    How can a fan help when fresh air is nowhere for it to suck from? I even suspect fan-less models may be better prepared for such scenario.
tomp 5y ago
Wow, it's quite fascinating what you non-Mac people are willing to put up with. Or maybe it's fascinating how Mac JustWorks(TM).
- jraph 5y ago
  Read the thread just next to your comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640283 It's also Macs. Computers are complicated, some things are probably released with a tight schedule, things are not formally verified, and therefore have bugs. Hardware or software. It's sad but we have to deal with it. Sleep has been working well on Linux on the machines I've been using for the past years (especially after removing a defective RAM stick from one of them - and the computer is built in such a way I could do it myself easily!). But yes, once or twice, the computer won't go to sleep because I'm running updates (that I launched manually, mind you), or some other shit. I've taken the habit of checking that the computer actually went to sleep before putting it in a bag and you should, too, for the one time your Mac won't go to sleep because who knows why.
  - hvidgaard 5y ago
    > It's sad but we have to deal with it. We can absolutely both meet reasonable innovation and deadlines with formal verification. It's just that no one wants to pay for it.
    - jraph 5y ago
      I'm interested in examples you may have, as someone who once flirted with formal methods. The most practical use of formal method I witnessed is model checking (with TLA+), but that does not check the actual implementation. There's also CompCert, a formally verified C compiler written in Coq, but even then, some parts are not verified so the final product may still have bugs.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Tomp was likely talking about the Mac “reopen running apps after reboot” which works very well in terms of putting your state back the way it was. Terminals aren’t fully restored (what would it mean to/how could you restore an ssh connection anyway?), but most apps for most people are.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Can confirm, this was an issue ten years ago and I can't understand why it still is a problem. Mind you, I've had it with an older model Macbook as well, wouldn't go to sleep properly when closed / off of power / in a bag.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> Besides starting up fast, another important value standby modes add is freeing you from having to open, position and initialize (open the documents/locations in them) all your apps manually every time. But this seems trivial to be reached by adding functions to just save the list of opened apps, their windows positions and the actual documents which were opened in them. This will require some coordinated effort from both the OS and the apps developers though. I just gave up on OS and app developers and implemented a half-assed solution myself using scripts. It works mainly because my setup is fairly fixed so I just fire everything up and fix any differences manually if needed.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  NeWS used to have a way to record an event stream and play it back later, so you could record a start-up event stream to play from ~/.startup.ps when you ran the NeWS server, that would pop up menus and open windows, start apps, position them on the screen, type stuff into them, click on buttons, etc. You had to be careful and not record setting up your desktop too fast, but then it worked pretty well! I would open up terminals on a bunch of different servers, start emacs in shell windows, set up my initial emacs shell window, etc. I'd just go take a dump and get some coffee while NeWS warmed up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS That was the best you could do in 1986, since none of the Unix programs or gui apps at that time had any idea about how to save and restore their state, and there wasn't a standard desktop framework (except what NeWS provided, which was hardly a standard). I'm disappointed that 35 years later all window systems don't come with a standard built-in event recording and playback (and even editing) feature you can use to set up your desktop or execute repetitive tasks. Like visual Emacs keyboard macros.
nottorp 5y ago
> Besides starting up fast, another important value standby modes add is freeing you from having to open, position and initialize (open the documents/locations in them) all your apps manually every time. Wait, Windows still doesn't do that?
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  Nope. I came back to MS Windows for work a couple of years ago -- it's ironically terrible at managing windows. It does have virtual desktops now at least. There are third-party solutions. MS need better window management.
danmur 5y ago
Your last point is why I use hibernate. The actual boot time is barely noticeable on new laptops but even if I remember what I was doing when I hibernated it, which is rare, it still takes a while to get all my terminal windows back and everything where it was.

vesinisa 5y ago

This is so infuriating, because this problem has already been solved once. It's called "Hibernation", and was added in Windows 95. This should write your MEM image to disk, power the laptop completely off and allow later restoring where you left when powering your laptop back on. But laptop manufacturers (including Apple) thought it somehow smart to remove true hibernation, and replace it with some botched "deep sleep" that is not actually working, as it does not actually turn the computer OFF. This is SO infuriating - who thought it smart to REGRESS on a solution that has worked so well for DECADES?

captn3m0 5y ago
There’s some really interesting security challenges that pop-up with Hibernation. Not sure if they blocked Apple though.
- vesinisa 5y ago
  Anyone who is concerned about this should already be using full-disk encryption, which means the memory contents are actually better protected during hibernation than in a live state. This is one thing that usually Linux gets mostly right .. only if the proprietary GPU drivers played along. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Apple certainly could implement this properly but instead decide to release a new half-assed half-hibernation after another.
  - captn3m0 5y ago
    https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/55845.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/55845.html I was referring to this.
    - vesinisa 5y ago
      AFAIK this is only an issue if you think UEFI Secure Boot and TPM are a good idea. The traditional way to implement full-disk encryption on Linux is by disabling UEFI validation and deriving the key from a passphrase rather than storing it in the TPM.
      - d110af5ccf 5y ago
        Personally I'd rather keep secure boot and just disable the kernel lockdown feature. You still gain a significant amount of security while maintaining functionality that way.
- dathinab 5y ago
  Not really, this security challenge have been solved long ago, and require a degree of involvement which makes them irrelevant for most people.
slezyr 5y ago
It might be slower than cold boot on machines with 32GB of RAM
- vesinisa 5y ago
  I have a 64 GB Mac with SSD and managed to trick it to use true hibernation (Apple does not want you to know it but you can still achieve true hibernation by enabling disk encryption (FileVault™) and forcing key material erasure from MEM on standby with `sudo pmset -a DestroyFVKeyOnStandBy 1`). I just timed it and bootup from hibernation to UI took 25 seconds, out of which maybe 5 seconds were taken by inputtting the encryption password. Certainly not a show-stopper, if this means not accidentally killing my €2k+ laptop because it decides to randomly wake up in my bag.
  - slezyr 5y ago
    Yes, but this is an issue with Apple products. My old PC with not-so-fast SSD can boot (Linux and Windows) much faster than 16" MacBook Pro.
    - vesinisa 5y ago
      Sorry.. I meant exactly that 25 seconds to boot up from hibernation is definitely not an issue. Why would it be? I store the laptop hibernated. I need to dehibernate exactly once a day. I work 8 hours a day, meaning less then a promille of my working day is spent waiting for my laptop to dehibernate. It's a non-issue.
zokier 5y ago
Hibernation in Windows hasn't gone anywhere. I have a Dell laptop in front of me and it has hibernate in the start menu as normal. Problem is that hibernation is slooow so people don't like to use it
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  I have a Dell laptop I bought within the last couple of months. Hibernate is not in the start menu, and the option to add it to the start menu has been disabled. It's still possible to assign "hibernate" as the action taken in response to various power-related actions such as closing the lid or pressing the power button. This makes no sense; I'm not sure what's going on.
  - RGamma 5y ago
    You can enable the start menu hibernate button in advanced power settings: System -> Power & sleep -> Additional power settings -> Choose what the power buttons do -> Change settings that are currently unavailable -> Check Hibernate. And then get lucky that your laptop wakes up again (mine dies 1 out of 10 times) Edit: sorry, can't read.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      No, you can't; that option is disabled. It cannot be checked. I don't know how I can state this more clearly. "Turn on fast startup (recommended)" is checked, and that option is also disabled and can't be unchecked, despite obviously being undesirable.
      - lozenge 5y ago
        Maybe you have Group Policy settings? Sometimes "Windows tweaker" type apps install these. Also, mine has a link "Change settings that are currently unavailable" which shows a UAC prompt and then enables all checkboxes.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
wizzwizz4 5y ago
Hibernation took about three seconds on my Windows 98 SE laptop. It took three minutes on my Windows XP. It never finishes on modern Windows.
- amiga-workbench 5y ago
  My Toshiba Libretto seems to have it built into the BIOS. The computer displays a full-screen animation of the Laptop dumping its system memory to disk, and after a few seconds it powers down. Its all very seamless and jank free.
- pepoluan 5y ago
  I use Windows 10 Pro on Asus VivoBook 15. Hibernation takes approximately one minute.
- jakub_g 5y ago
  Time to hibernate linearly depends on amount of RAM you have, and whether you have HDD or SSD. On my 16GB T450 (SSD) with Win10 it takes several seconds.
- foepys 5y ago
  I use it every day on Windows 10. It takes about 30 seconds to go to full hibernate and 30 seconds to restore. My laptop has 32GB of RAM.
IIsi50MHz 5y ago
For people who had working hibernation, it may seem so. For support staff, and for hardware & OS vendors, dealing with customers complaining about hibernation or S3 sleep not working those states were so infuriating and definitely NOT a solved problem. Example failure modes: — Doesn't wake when told. — Immediately wakes instead of staying in low power state. — Performs a cold boot when trying to wake. — OS disables desired state with no explanation. — OS disables desired state which has worked perfectly on that machine for month/years, and OS claims it has been disabled because it is not compatible.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Then they should've worked on fixing those problems, instead of adding even more new ones. (I admit I haven't used systems with broken hibernates, or at least not any where a little it of troubleshooting could get it working, so that may skew my perception of it.)
acchow 5y ago
Standby actually works 100% properly on my M1 and Intel MacBooks. Flush men to disk is not something I want or need. I quite like the instant availability and have come to expect it of products.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
Hibernate works fine on my windows laptop, but it was not the default setting for lid closed. Mine has a performance switch built in. Close it while in high performance mode and the fan would continue to run at full blast. Stupid.

Raed667 5y ago

> laptop overheating if being put in the backpack I killed a macbook air exactly like this. It just decided not to shutdown like usual. Usually I'd put it on sleep mode, or just close the lid and it is fine, but it only took one time for it not to work properly to find the insides of my backpack like a sauna.

creshal 5y ago
> It just decided not to shutdown like usual. This happened once or twice with Windows laptops for me (Lenovo and Asus); but each time the laptop survived. Was yours a fanless model?
- Raed667 5y ago
  It was probably the 2017 model, it had a fan. But it was in the tight pouch within the backpack that was supposed to protect laptops from bumps, so it didn't have much room to breath.
- rawbot 5y ago
  Same thing happened to me with my Surface Book. I found it the next day with fans at max and burning hot. Still survived. Why aren't laptops shutting down when the CPU gets unbearably hot?
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Good question, they do turn off the discrete GPU when it gets too hot.
  - creshal 5y ago
    "Unbearably hot" for meatbags and "unbearably hot" for CPUs are different things; meatbags start having troubles at 50°C, while internal components are fine until 90-120°C. Traditional hard disks are the biggest exception, but I'm fairly certain that's not a worry for a Surface.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  How can a fan help when fresh air is nowhere for it to suck from? I even suspect fan-less models may be better prepared for such scenario.

tomp 5y ago

Wow, it's quite fascinating what you non-Mac people are willing to put up with. Or maybe it's fascinating how Mac JustWorks(TM).

jraph 5y ago
Read the thread just next to your comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640283 It's also Macs. Computers are complicated, some things are probably released with a tight schedule, things are not formally verified, and therefore have bugs. Hardware or software. It's sad but we have to deal with it. Sleep has been working well on Linux on the machines I've been using for the past years (especially after removing a defective RAM stick from one of them - and the computer is built in such a way I could do it myself easily!). But yes, once or twice, the computer won't go to sleep because I'm running updates (that I launched manually, mind you), or some other shit. I've taken the habit of checking that the computer actually went to sleep before putting it in a bag and you should, too, for the one time your Mac won't go to sleep because who knows why.
- hvidgaard 5y ago
  > It's sad but we have to deal with it. We can absolutely both meet reasonable innovation and deadlines with formal verification. It's just that no one wants to pay for it.
  - jraph 5y ago
    I'm interested in examples you may have, as someone who once flirted with formal methods. The most practical use of formal method I witnessed is model checking (with TLA+), but that does not check the actual implementation. There's also CompCert, a formally verified C compiler written in Coq, but even then, some parts are not verified so the final product may still have bugs.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Tomp was likely talking about the Mac “reopen running apps after reboot” which works very well in terms of putting your state back the way it was. Terminals aren’t fully restored (what would it mean to/how could you restore an ssh connection anyway?), but most apps for most people are.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Can confirm, this was an issue ten years ago and I can't understand why it still is a problem. Mind you, I've had it with an older model Macbook as well, wouldn't go to sleep properly when closed / off of power / in a bag.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

> Besides starting up fast, another important value standby modes add is freeing you from having to open, position and initialize (open the documents/locations in them) all your apps manually every time. But this seems trivial to be reached by adding functions to just save the list of opened apps, their windows positions and the actual documents which were opened in them. This will require some coordinated effort from both the OS and the apps developers though. I just gave up on OS and app developers and implemented a half-assed solution myself using scripts. It works mainly because my setup is fairly fixed so I just fire everything up and fix any differences manually if needed.

DonHopkins 5y ago
NeWS used to have a way to record an event stream and play it back later, so you could record a start-up event stream to play from ~/.startup.ps when you ran the NeWS server, that would pop up menus and open windows, start apps, position them on the screen, type stuff into them, click on buttons, etc. You had to be careful and not record setting up your desktop too fast, but then it worked pretty well! I would open up terminals on a bunch of different servers, start emacs in shell windows, set up my initial emacs shell window, etc. I'd just go take a dump and get some coffee while NeWS warmed up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS That was the best you could do in 1986, since none of the Unix programs or gui apps at that time had any idea about how to save and restore their state, and there wasn't a standard desktop framework (except what NeWS provided, which was hardly a standard). I'm disappointed that 35 years later all window systems don't come with a standard built-in event recording and playback (and even editing) feature you can use to set up your desktop or execute repetitive tasks. Like visual Emacs keyboard macros.

nottorp 5y ago

pbhjpbhj 5y ago
Nope. I came back to MS Windows for work a couple of years ago -- it's ironically terrible at managing windows. It does have virtual desktops now at least. There are third-party solutions. MS need better window management.

danmur 5y ago

Your last point is why I use hibernate. The actual boot time is barely noticeable on new laptops but even if I remember what I was doing when I hibernated it, which is rare, it still takes a while to get all my terminal windows back and everything where it was.